Hello, everyone. To start off this article, I have a question: What happened to the diary community? If anyone has any knowledge on that subject please let me know in the comment section down below.
In my last diary entry, (which I had posted in the community), I talked a lot about my first day at my new job. That first day, however, was only a classroom orientation. Wednesday thru Friday of last week, I was actually on the warehouse floor getting trained on a couple different pieces of equipment. Besides that, I've been spending a lot of time with my girlfriend, and playing on my Oculus Quest. So, if you want all of the gritty details of all that stuff, continue reading below!
Training for my New Job
I've mentioned it here and in my other articles here on read.cash. The rumors are true; I have a job now. It's a great feeling! If you've read any of my past diary entries you know that I went a long time, (about a year), without a steady job due to Covid as well as some mental health issues. Since I've already focused so much on the things that kept me from getting a job, I'm not going to go into that stuff. Instead, I want to take this time to talk about my training, and what I'm going to do once that training is over. In the future I plan to focus on other things, so in this article I'm just getting all of this out of my system.
My career is now with a cold storage supply chain. The company has a lot of big-name customers, such as Kraft-Heinz, and we deliver their product to some prominent retailers, such as Kroger. They're a nationwide logistics company, and they even have an establishment in Ireland, which is cool to me since I'm Irish. My role in all of this is what they call a Frontline Associate, which essentially means I'm at the bottom of the food chain in their warehouse. That might seem cynical of me to say, but I'm actually pretty proud to have this job and I have high hopes for the future, as I am apt to write. Most of my time is going to be spent driving a forklift, carrying product from the truck/train docks into the freezer, or vice versa. The freezer sits at about -10 degrees, which sounds very cold. However, it's actually pretty refreshing, especially when they supply you with this heavily insulated uniform that you wear even in those areas where it's not subzero temperatures. In those parts of the warehouse, it gets extremely hot when you're all bundled up like that.
The biggest obstacle in this job right now is the fact that I have never driven a forklift. I've worked in a few factories at this point, but I've always been on the production side of everything. Here, there is no production side, so every associate is required to become a certified LTO, unless they're working for sanitation. The warehouse has several types of equipment, from "walkies", (a rideable electric pallet jack), to standing reach trucks, to standard sit-down forklifts. There's a few others, but those three are what I'm going to be spending most of my time on at first. So, most of my last week was spent getting comfortable on those machines. I spent one day entirely on a walkie, and I'll tell you what, those are really uncomfortable to drive in general. To turn it you have to use your arms, and by the end of that day my arms were quite sore. The platform that you stand on is also pretty small, and you're required to keep your feet on the platform for some obvious safety reasons. This means that when you're pulling the lever towards you, you're getting pretty close to knocking yourself off the damn thing. The nice thing is, these go pretty slow, so there isn't a large risk of having a fatal accident.
Thursday, on the other hand, I was on a reach truck all day. These are a little bit easier to drive, physically, but the steering is hard to wrap my head around since we're only allowed to drive in reverse when we're going through the warehouse. To steer, you have a little lever that spins in a circle, or sometimes a wheel. So driving forward, you steer in the same direction as you would in a car. In reverse, of course, it is the opposite. Obviously, reversing in a car is something you have to do often, but it's usually only for a short amount of time and you don't have to think about maintaining a straight vehicle for the whole length of a road. I have figured out that you turn the steering mechanism clockwise to turn the back-end toward the left, and counter-clockwise to turn it towards the right. This information is all well and good until you're driving full-speed down the warehouse floor with a myriad of other trucks and people going past you. While I was training on this piece of equipment I was doing okay, but I'd be lying if I said there weren't some instances where I thought I was going to crash into a wall.
On Friday, which was my last day of training for the week, I started actually pulling pallets from their racks in the freezer. This was fairly easy on the reach truck, since making a tight turn is just a matter of spinning the wheel until it can't go any more in that direction. Lining it up with the outriders is probably the hardest part in that situation, but after doing it a couple times I found that it came easier and easier. Then my trainer decided he'd like to see how I handled myself pulling pallets with the walkie. Getting back up on that thing I could already tell that it felt unfamiliar, as if I hadn't spent an entire day on one just forty-eight hours ago. It's worth mentioning that the training walkie in particular is very tough to steer. There's a lot of resistance in the handle. Making the tightest turn was nearly impossible for me, but that sharp turn is an absolute requirement, considering that some aisles in the freezer bay are just wide enough to fit the walkie in horizontally before you pull into the pallet. At first I was struggling, a lot. My trainer was very patient with me though, and asked if I would like to go back to the empty part of the dock where I had first familiarized myself with the equipment. I said sure, so we spent another hour out there so I could get used to the steering again, and doing those sharp turns. Once I felt confident in my ability to use it, we went back into the freezer to practice. I got the hang of it much easier after that, and we ended my training that day with using the high reach to take some stuff off the next level of pallets, which is about six feet off the ground. That was about the same as taking it off the lower level, so I performed that task well.
Some things that I have to improve on:
1) Making sure I'm doing everything in the safest way possible. I have a bad habit, (or lack thereof), of not checking in both directions and sounding my horn when I back up from the pallet rack. If someone was coming past me at a time like that I would like cause an accident, and that is something that I never want to be responsible for.
2) My steering in both the reach truck and walkie. With the walkie it's just a matter of finding the best positioning possible in such a small space, especially when I'm pulling the handle towards me. My trainer also pointed out that when steering the walkie, I use my arms as the main source of power far too often. He recommended that I use my hips more, when I step in to push the handle, or to turn my body more when I'm pulling it towards me. When he said that I definitely took it in, and I plan to use that advice to its fullest. In the reach truck, I need to make sure I'm aware of the direction that I'm turning the wheel in. Far too often I found myself needing to stop and think about which way the truck would turn if I spun the wheel in a certain direction. On occasions where time is of the essence, that isn't gonna fly. Plus being more aware of that will help prevent accidents in the future.
3) I need to remind myself that I'm starting with absolutely zero knowledge on the functionality of forklifts. After a couple mistakes I realized I was getting very angry at myself, which was entirely uncalled for. I do have a history of anger management issues, and oftentimes those feelings are directed at myself. I may always struggle with that, but that's just another reason why I should always be working on it.
Everything Besides Work
I think I covered everything that happened while I was training over the past week. It was some good experience, and I met a whole lot of people that I'll probably never work with again on my life, since I'm going to a completely different shift. Either way, allow me to delve into everything that happened outside of work this week. It wasn't much, but I did make sure that I was able to enjoy myself. I'm also coming off a four-day weekend, which was actually entirely too uneventful.
Fun with the Oculus Quest
So I made a pretty mediocre throwaway article about my time with the Oculus Quest since I got it about a week and a half ago. I talked about all the things you can do in it without spending money, and some of the functionality. However, I'm no techno wizard and there are thousands more qualified than me to review the console, who already have. If you want to read mine, for whatever reason, feel free to do so. I won't be linking it.
Regardless, I have been having a lot of fun with it, as the title of this section implies. After exploring the interface and everything that's available if you don't want to spend any more than the $300 some-odd that the headset costs you, I settled on two things which I'll likely be spending most of my time on until I purchase one of the bigger titles that they have to offer. First I found a game called Rec Room in the Oculus Store. It's a free-to-play game, (obviously), that revolves around community-created maps and social interaction. Basically, think VR Roblox. The game is actually available on other systems, but I don't see myself playing it outside of VR. There's climbing, a mechanic that I instantly fell in love with; shooting, which I'm really bad at so far; sports, which make for fun competition; then there's a whole lot of voice chat that I don't particularly care for. Unfortunately, a lot of the player base is little kids who don't understand proper etiquette or the notion of inside voices. On the other hand I have met a couple pretty cool people so I can't complain too much.
Besides Rec Room, there's a couple other free games on the store that I found to be at least somewhat entertaining. There's Echo VR, which is like a frisbee/soccer hybrid in zero gravity. While it's pretty nauseating, I had a bit of fun with it. Not something I plan on playing much more of, though. Then there's a couple poker apps. I love poker, so I decided to check out Poker Stars VR. After joining a couple tables I realized that nobody there cared about legitimately playing poker so much as just having fun and being silly. That's all well and good, but it wasn't the experience that I was looking for, so I eventually just quit the app and never returned.
Then I found it. Imagine Beat Saber. Now imagine that it's free. Now imagine that it's full of player-created maps for a shitload more songs than are included in Beat Saber or its multiple DLC packs. What you're picturing, then, is Moon Rider. I made the mistake in my past article of calling it Moonlight Rider, and it made me feel pretty silly when I realized that I had gotten it wrong. Guess what? Didn't change it. Anyway, I had a LOT of fun with this one just yesterday. You can choose to play it Beat-Saber-style, or you can take out your aggression by punching the blocks as they pass by you. I played this for hours yesterday and ended up quite sore, (still feeling it). I plan on playing this more later on today and I recommend that you do too.
So, that's a lot of what I did during my time off from work. Besides that, I was...
Spending time with the girlfriend
Yeah, when neither of us are working this is pretty much what I'm doing. We live together, so it's a little difficult to find time for myself if she isn't at her job. Still, I love it. My girlfriend herself is a great person, she's a healthcare worker and I'm extremely proud of everything that she's been doing during this whole pandemic. I think she is quite brave. Most of the time what we do is sit around and watch television - not too exciting, but hey, whatever. Sometimes we go out to the bar or something, but I'm actually not too fond on that. Not that I don't love drinking, but oftentimes we find ourselves accompanied by quite a few of her friends, who I don't know very well at all, and as an introvert the experience is overall draining. That's fine though, I can put up with that as long as she's enjoying herself and I'm not being made to feel too uncomfortable. This last week, though, we didn't do any of that. The most that we did was go out to dinner with my dad, which was quite nice. We ended up at an Italian restaurant, got some pasta, and bullshitted for a while until we decided to pack things up and go home for the night.
Other than that, yeah, the weekend was pretty uneventful. We watched Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League and checked out the first episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, both of which were enjoyable. That's just about it.
The Week Ahead
I've been off from work since Friday, but this week I'm scheduled to go onto my actual shift time, which is supposed to be Wednesday night through Sunday morning in 10 hour shifts. I'm looking forward to going back to a third shift schedule, considering I'm more of a night owl anyway, though I am worried about being tired while operating heavy equipment. I made sure to stock up on Monster energy drinks since I have no regard for my physical well-being. For now I'll get three days off a week while still hitting forty hours, which is very nice. However, once my thirty-day training period is over with, I'm going to be mandated an extra two hours per normally-scheduled shift, and then two extra days, which will be ten and eight hour shifts respectively. I do not look forward to that at all. I intend to find a way to still do what I want/need to during the week, including exercising at the gym, cooking, and the day-to-day upkeep which my body and apartment both require.
I'll likely be posting weekly diary entries from this point on, as long as I have something to talk about besides work. Until next time, you all have a lovely week. Thank you for reading!
